Secular Trans Feminism

Zinnia Jones is a writer and videoblogger, co-blogging with Heather McNamara and Lux Pickel. She's written extensively on the subjects of secularism, feminism, and being transgender. Since 2008, her videos have received over 8 million views, and her articles have been featured in Autostraddle, the Huffington Post, and The Fight magazine. You can reach her at zjemptv@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @ZJemptv, and her YouTube channel is at www.zinniajones.com.

About Lux Pickel

Luxander Pickel is a genderqueer atheist and nerdy Whovian. They care very much about human rights, destroying harmful social systems, and promoting rational thinking. Lux struggles with depression and spends a lot of their time playing video games. When less debilitated by chronic illness, they love to write about social justice and make art; on a good day they love chatting about sex and relationships from a poly-demi-pansexual perspective.

EVENTS

The Traditional Values Coalition’s beauty standards

The “Traditional Values Coalition” once again has their hackles up over the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and this is the unapologetically hateful email they sent out yesterday:

Terrifying, isn’t it? If we can’t discriminate against trans people, then they might be able to hold a job, possibly even one that involves working with children! It’s almost like they think they’re human or something.

While there’s no information about the person depicted in their email or how they identify (and I doubt the TVC bothered to ask before using their picture), the attempt to police the appearance of trans people is obvious. It’s also a distraction. “Look, trans women are scary!” isn’t their true objection at all. Would they be equally upset about cis women being allowed to teach children if these women don’t meet a mainstream standard of feminine attractiveness? No. And would they suddenly be okay with trans women teaching children if they were all beauty pageant contestants? Not a chance. They don’t have a problem with trans people because of how they look. They have a problem with trans people because we exist.

Comments

Also, it’s blatantly obvious to me that they never even give an argument for why trans people shouldn’t have jobs … apparently repeatedly telling you that trans people exist is supposed to be its own answer.

“trans! … therefore, apocalypse! hurry up to take away their rights before we get confused and start thinking of them as people!”

They hardly hide it in public, they sure aren’t about to hide it internally. I think that’s why they don’t spell out their objections to trans* people in classrooms, too. They assume people already oppose it (for religious reasons, I imagine, given the “religious liberties” bit).

It’s a tactic that works. In the run up to LGBT legislation in Alaska, the entire project was sunk mainly on a cartoon campaign of ‘hairy guy in dress wants access to your blond, blue-eyed children’. There was far more focus on the presumed infestation of trans people in public life than concerns over gay marriage, etc. Trans people are a soft target: still easy to caricature (LG is too mainstream now for people to fall for the outdated ugliness of the 70s sissy/butch tropes, for the most part.) It taps into the paranoia in particular to trans people. It follows the typical right wing strategy of magnifying a hypothetical horror and expanding the coverage of it to indict as many people as possible. And it’s working, even in the queerness itself, as more and more LGB see T as an unworkable addition that hinders the cause, splinters resources, and is far too much a ‘special issue’ to be brought into the fold.

LGBT anti-discrimination legislation in the municipality of Anchorage, specifically (Prop 5). And yes it was a nasty, dehumanizing campaign they (Jerry Prevo and the Roman Catholic Church) waged against us, pretty much the same crap we see being pumped out by the Traditional Values Coalition above.

I would totally let scare quotes Mary teach my kid, same as any other qualified teacher. It really takes 10 seconds to explain “some women look different than other women” to my 5-year-old and then we’re off to something else. It’s the TVC who are confused.

transformation from an ugly caterpillar into a beautiful… something or other

That is utterly disgusting. Also, is Mary a real person who knew the TVC were using her picture for this nefarious purpose? I hope she sues. Or is that in fact a composite image designed especially for the purpose of appealing to a particular set of reductive stereotypes? She’s got a nose stud too. How perverse and dangerous she must be. Also, all the children in the banner are drawn as wholesome white kids, some of whom have 1950s hair. Idealised children vs real homo perverts. Jolly well done all round.